Egypt

The mission of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) is proper control of cancer in Egypt through developing and maintaining integrated quality programs in patient care, research, education and prevention.

The NCI mission could only be accomplished by building and maintaining government and public trust and support, together with national and international cooperation to reach the state of the art in application of health care.

NCI is committed to the multidisciplinary approach in cancer management in which different treatment modalities cooperate rather then compete. Professional and public educations are vital to solve the problem of the late presentation of patients.

 

The development of modern oncology in Egypt is credited to two great surgeons, namely: Professor Abou-El Nassr and Professor El Sebai. The idea of establishing a National Cancer Institute arose in 1950s and was implemented through the great administrative efforts of Professor Ahmed Lotfi Abou El Nassr. With the same enthusiasm, Professor Ismail El Sebai introduced radical surgery for cancer and trained a large group of Egyptian surgeons. Thanks to their efforts, Oncology was recognized as a separate specialty by Cairo University in 1959.
The Original National Cancer Institute including its hospital 270 beds was built in the sixties and started operating in 1969. The total cost of building as well as equipment and foreign educational missions was only one million Egyptian Pounds (about $2.6 Million). The running cost for the year 1969 was 83 thousand LE ($200,000). Manpower Included 40 medical staff members as well as, 150 supporting and nursing staff serving in first year of operation about 5,700 new cases and 8,000 outpatient visits.

In Egypt today, the number of new cancer patients per year is estimated to be 65,000. To this number is added a total of 250,000 patients accumulating from previous years who also require medical care. Accumulated patients represent about three times the number of new cases. This patient load will expand in the future as the population continues to grow, and as the prevalence of known etiologic factors increase. Egyptian patients with cancer usually present at a relatively advanced stage of their disease, which has a negative impact on treatment results. The three most common cancers encountered are urinary bladder (25%), breast (14%) and lymphomas and leukemia's (12%).
Patients with cancer contrary to other disease, require repeated hospital care for several years. Thus a child with acute leukemia requires about 132 hospital visits over a period of ten years while a woman with breast cancer may require more than 20 visits over ten years. Since NCI is the leading comprehensive cancer center in the country, it is overloaded by patients who referred from allover Egypt, although in recent years six small cancer centers have opened throughout the country. In addition to these cancer centers, six university based clinical oncology departments operate in various parts of Egypt.